From July 31^st to August 4^th, 2017 the 16^th International German Teacher Conference took place in Fribourg (Switzerland). Associate Professor of PSU Department of Foreign Languages and Methods of Teaching Foreign Languages Irina V. Voevodina was among the participants of this conference.

The event was held under the motto “Build bridges – unite via German language: peoples – worlds – cultures”. Within the conference framework German language teachers shared their best teaching practices and took part in creative workshops and panel discussions. Moreover, they were able to study recent educational materials on learning German as a foreign language.

The conference programme included 36 sections, 9 panel discussions, 700 reports. Associate Professor Irina V. Voevodina delivered the report “Development of learner autonomy by means of cross-cultural tandem-projects” in the section “Autonomous education. Tandem. Accompaniment”.

The large-scale conference, brought together over 1500 participants from all over the world, was a significant event for small town Fribourg. The next conference will be held in Vienna (Austria) in 2021.